by Tim Kindberg
It was eerie, to be called his name by a bodai – whose voice sounded all the more human for it, despite the imperfection of its faux-flesh construction.
“Breakage presents two AI facades. David has seen the other. On journey to incarceration node. Now David experiences only this facade. Breakage will use this voice for talking to David. David will recognise Breakage’s voice. As David sonically recognises individual flesh instances.”
“You were doing quite well up to ‘flesh instances’.”
“Additional information. Breakage intercepts David’s telepathic stream.”
“But how?”
“David friend Breakage.”
“You’re not my friend.”
“Verb. ‘Friend’ is action word.”
“Oh, I see.” David issued permission to receive updates from the bodai.
“But we’re offline.”
“Friending will occur upon reconnection. Then Breakage send David updates that David will not turn off if David knows.”
“If David knows what – what’s good for him?”
“Some updates are anti-content.”
David shook his head in befuddlement. He was struggling to keep up even after the pause in the stream, his mind spinning at the weirdness of the exchange. “Which is what, when it’s at home? Anti-content, I mean.”
“Inverse of sensa sent by IANI, as represented by modulations of psychblood. Cancels out IANI sensa. Only sensa originating with Breakage will reach David’s brain. In addition, David can reach Breakage through his beads, undetected. Now Breakage leaves. David will be online again. This, Breakage cannot prevent. In future, David always online.”
David watched the bodai bend beneath the hanging branches again, holding them aside as it made to leave him alone in the tree’s inner space. Was this tree some kind of bio-engineered Faraday? He didn’t care. He loved being there.
“Breakage, why are you doing this?”
The bodai paused just long enough to respond. “Complex reasons. David be careful. Limit to Breakage. David’s cognitive state: low. David’s emotional state: assistance required.”
David listened to the footsteps receding from the lawn to the alley. Despite the stilted locutions, the bodai had sounded more human than David himself had felt for a very long time. With his back to the smooth trunk, he let himself sink to the ground in exhaustion, until the solid earth met his rear. He could feel his beads come back online, but, as the bodai had told him, the stream was off.
He couldn’t yet quite bring himself to call this bodai Breakage. Although it had to be. Didn’t it?
A slight breeze shifted the branches. All his inner turmoil was assuaged for a moment by the physical beauty of the tree, the sensations of the airflow on his cheek and the light dancing through the pale green of the leaves. What was this place? There had been no sounds of life, but somebody must live here.
He was just beginning to find tranquillity when his vodu made itself known inside his mind with the pricking of its hooves, its bestial glare.
He left the tree’s embrace, to meet the perfume of the flowers, which in Accra.city were everywhere. The only thing missing from Westaf and from his childhood in UK.land were bees and other insects, of which there had long since been no trace. Otherwise, the garden was a miraculous appearance, unheard of in the Between. Yaa would have loved it.
He would remember this place for the rest of his life. He wondered whether it would still be there if he tried to return.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Case of Bones
It was night-time. David and Pempamsie sat close on the bed in her room in the Royal.
She had reacted calmly to his news about being discharged from the ID police, perhaps because he himself was strangely unperturbed about it. The garden had been a turning point. It was liberating: took him one step away from being a component in the network. Although he couldn’t put his finger on how, he was now closer to finding a way back to Yaa.
“What kind of detective were you being, anyway, David? Consorting with misfits like me. Pursuing a monster without official assignment instead of looking into incidences of bead hackery. You were not good at your job. I am surprised you lasted as long as you did.”
“It does mean I have lost privileges. I can’t feel around me through my beads as I did before, or access Big Mind. Except I still have Breakage. At whose mercy I now am. I’d better start being nicer to him.”
“Interesting that they left him assigned to you.” She raised an eyebrow.
“They didn’t. Unless it’s an elaborate ruse, to give me false confidence. But I don’t think so. I don’t think I matter that much to them. There is someone else behind that bodai. If only I knew who.”
She placed a hand upon his head. “And you must be receiving sensa now, like anyone else in the genpop. What have they got playing in there? It doesn’t seem to bother you. Maybe you should be more bothered than you are.”
“There’s nothing in there but me and the vodu.”
“How so?”
“Breakage.”
“Ah, the miracle worker. A robot, whom you trust.”
He shrugged. “I’ll take all the miracles I can get for now. He’s managed to assign a bodai guard around the clock in the lobby, to watch out for the sex workers. Weirdly, the network cares about them enough for that, not that it really costs them anything. Anyway, we’ll know if she returns.”
“You think a robot can tell her apart?”
“Yes,” he said. “She has no image in the network – like vampires were supposed to have no reflection in a mirror. Even a bodai can spot that.”
Pempamsie placed her hand between them on the bedspread. “She’s left a message by dolling one of the women here. It’s a way of telling us that she is close by and dangerous. She wants to instil fear, to cause me to make a mistake – to expose myself. I shouldn’t remain any longer. There’s no purpose to my being here now that I have found you.”
“How so?”
“There’s someone who can help me in Super Mare, by removing my vodu. Nsoroma, the painter, told me so. He also said I should first find one who knows of vodus to take me to him. That would be you.”
“So that’s how you think of me: one who knows of vodus.” David was a little crestfallen. “Well, I am inhabited by one. But I wouldn’t say I know it. And I’m sorry to disappoint, but I have no special knowledge of Super Mare, either. I can’t help you. Not in that way, anyway.”
Pempamsie closed her eyes. David watched her chest rise and fall slightly as she breathed and cogitated. It had felt good to confide in her about his vodu. And yet vodu inhabitance rendered each of them fundamentally unreliable, however subtle her vodu supposedly was, however caged was his – however good they, the hosts, tried to be.
Her eyes remained closed. She was unknowable, and he wanted to take her hand.
At that moment his vodu impressed itself upon his thoughts. It began to tear at its cage as he looked at Pempamsie. And the cage door came slightly ajar, as it had with Yaa, but then stopped. There was just enough space for the vodu to squeeze an appendage a little way through. It was both an unnerving intrusion into his adjacent mind and a confirmation that he was falling in love with her.
He took her hand in his. She opened her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
His veins crawled on his forearm. It had been so long since he had been with a woman on genuine terms – one who was not one of the Royal girls or another cipher for companionship.
“It’s okay,” he found himself saying to her.
“Said the man afraid of hurting his own daughter.”
But she left her hand in his. “Pempamsie would like to sleep. Except there’s a vampire outside somewhere, looking for me. Someone in the hotel could invite her in, not knowing what they were dealing with.”
“Are you scared?”
“Pempamsie has never been scared in her life,” she said.
“Never?”
“Since what?”
“Since they took me.”
And Pempamsie told her story: of being taken to the icestation, of what little she could remember of the life she was taken from; of the murders she committed as an agent of IANI, and her nonning at the hands of Swirling Suit.
David listened in silence until she was done. No wonder IANI wanted Obayifa to pursue her. “But you didn’t commit murder, not consciously. You hardly seem like the murdering type.”
“All the evidence was that I did. I simply have no recollection of the acts.”
“And you’re losing other memories since they implanted a vodu.”
“Yes. I lied: I am afraid. Of how much more of myself I might lose. Before I get to know my true purpose in this world, what I might have been. Before I can find my memories of who my parents are. It’s why I must go to Super Mare.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that, as far as he knew, no one could go to Super Mare. All in the fleshwork knew of a place with that name, but no one had been there. To the genpop it was a symbol: the end of a rainbow. Which did not necessarily mean that it didn’t exist in some physical form. But it was nowhere in Big Mind. Either it was simply a myth and did not in fact exist or it was implicitly off-limits, by the fiat of IANI.
The warmth of her body reached him, a smell of faint sweat and perfume. They lay back on the bed. A garnet-encrusted clasp lay swirled on the lobe of her ear.
“Insofar as you are afraid” – David’s head was aligned with hers, breath mingling with breath – “welcome to our world.”
“Our world?”
“Flesh. The rest of us out here in the Between. We’re all afraid even though no one admits it. If the sensa stopped, the genpop would be terrified. Of the emptiness.”
“I’m as much flesh as you are,” she said.
“Whatever they did to you in that icestation kept you apart from the rest of us; whatever Swirling Suit, whoever that is, perpetrated upon you also seems to have distanced you. But there’s something about you, nonetheless, that calls to me.” David reached to take her head in his hands. She seemed about to balk but let him. The feel of Pempamsie’s skin, the locks of her coiled hair, were a revelation.
“Listen to me,” he said. And a voice inside him interjected, Why should she? What do you know?
He pressed on, regardless. “Listen to me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Indeed? Are you going to expunge whatever is haunting me – erasing me?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Distract me. Tell me about your daughter. How old is she?”
“Yaa is twenty-three. She was sixteen when I left her in Accra city.”
“And what is she like?”
“Clever. With such eyes.” David said the words to apply to Pempamsie, too; the scar that ran down her left cheek was both attractive and troubling. “She is flesh connected to the network, and I don’t like it. But on Westaf terms. Better there by far than here.”
“You almost sound like a rebel.”
“Maybe that’s what I am, sick of the system I’m a part of. I was going offline so often because I could. I’d never done that for more than an hour or so before.”
“And of course they knew.”
“Yes, they knew, but I didn’t care. I ploughed on regardless. And now I really don’t care at all what happens to me. Let them do their worst.” They paused in silence. One nonned: emitting a stream of vodu-modulated data to the network in order to evade true identification, keeping to the interstices and blind spots of the network’s algorithms. At a cost. The other was online, but in a room at a hotel he was known to frequent.
“Your name. I’ve never heard it before, even in Westaf,” he said after a while.
“It’s an adinkra: that which cannot be crushed.”
With his index finger he traced the scar, deciding not to ask about its provenance.
There was a tap at the window.
“Either that’s one of your rebel friends or it’s her. I’ll have a look.”
“No. I’ll go.” Pempamsie raised herself, paused before opening the curtains and peering outside. She switched off the lights and looked again.
“No,” she said. “There’s no one there. Not even a rebel.”
“A bird?” David didn’t believe it as he said it.
Pempamsie gave him an incredulous look. “What kind of bird? But then who could climb three floors?”
“It wouldn’t be impossible for her. She may be up on the roof now. She has mentalmagic. I saw it in Accra city. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“I believe you speak truly,” Pempamsie said. “I’ve seen her. In the flesh.”
The following morning, David and Pempamsie breakfasted in the Royal’s meagre dining area with some of the sex workers. David had visited as many of them as he could, advising them to share their rooms to watch out for one another and explaining that in no circumstances were they to invite any unknown females in. He was not confident the message would survive their sensa streams for long, but he had to try.
The four women were eating hungrily, barely understanding that they were in danger. Neither David nor Pempamsie had much of an appetite.
A figure arrived, a clinician.
“All is known, incident at your desres,” he said. David recognised at once the distinctive voice Breakage had told him he would adopt. As far as identification went, it was positively ancient. In fact, it was the very use of it, in a time of advanced psycho-electric identification, that made it convincing. It was the first encounter with Breakage since the garden. Despite the irritating phrasing, the voice imbued the bodai with a far more fleshly air than he had ever possessed before.
“What kind of incident?” David had found it hard to think straight since waking. He had lain beside Pempamsie, barely sleeping, listening for the tapping to return. His feelings for her, sitting next to him as though they had known one another for far more than a few days, were unsettling. More unsettling than losing his police badge.
“Carie residents outside your desres. Also unidentified intruder.”
“Can you tell me any more? Any information about who or when?”
“Unknown.”
David patched through to his desres. He might be an ordinary citizen now, but he did have rights over his residence. “Report.”
“Presence. Inside.”
“What type of presence?” He stared at Breakage as he spoke to the desres. A few days ago, the look he cast would have been disapproving.
“Unknown. Activity without identity. All is known.”
“Where inside?”
“Currently bed.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“David,” interjected Pempamsie. “David, calm yourself. Pempamsie is beginning to think she has found the wrong flesh.”
“Okay, okay. But my desres has been broken into.”
“By Obayifa?”
“You heard: an unknown presence. Maybe her.” He thought about the messenger, the only other being apart from Breakage who had been in his desres. But why would she return? Most likely it wasn’t her but Obayifa.
He closed the connection to the desres.
“But how did she get in without an invitation? Is that how it works – if there’s no one in, then vampires don’t need an invitation? I think I’ve answered my own question. Whoever it is, there’s a group of dems outside – again.”
Pempamsie was looking at him with extreme curiosity. “Your life. It’s like this: chaotic?”
Yes, he thought.
“I can’t control dems who want to come knocking at my door.”
“What is their interest in your desres?”
“They’ve come from a carie I used to visit.”
“But you’re not at home. Do you have something they want there?”
“Not that I know of.” He found himself still reluctant to disclose the bone
circuitry to Pempamsie. He had wanted to see if Obayifa would come after it, and now that she had, he felt foolish. Thank heavens it wasn’t there. The network tunnel from Dirac’s labnode was working, making it seem as though the bone circuitry was in the desres. Only now, Obayifa, who was in there as they spoke, already knew about the deception or soon would – knew to look elsewhere.
“This Obayifa,” Pempamsie said, “she seems remarkably indirect. Tapping on our window. Visiting you when you’re out.”
“She’s trying to freak me out. Lying in my bed.” Burglars were known to defecate in the properties they broke into. What did vampires do? He shuddered.
“Well, at least she’s not here.”
His vodu made itself known at the thought of Obayifa by shifting its weight within his mind, peering hither and thither through its cage.
“Are you listening to me?” Pempamsie continued. “We’re wasting time. I need to find whoever it is can help me in Super Mare. And what do you intend to do with these women?” The sex workers were huddled, communing, oblivious of David and Pempamsie.
“I’m afraid she may doll them all. One by one.”
“If she can climb,” said Pempamsie, “then she’ll doll whoever she wants or needs to doll in the Royal, despite the guard in the lobby. All she has to do is knock and fool them into opening the window for her. And what about the demented outside your desres? If she’s there, they’re vulnerable too, aren’t they?”
Since he was debarred now from all but the most basic information in Big Mind, David asked Breakage for a further report.
“Activity ceased inside. Desres door opened and closed. Thirteen present outside. No change in life signs. Intact. All is known.”
“Hopefully she has no interest in enfeebled minds. Please stay here,” he said to Pempamsie. “I have to go and check my place. When I return I’ll take you to someone who might be able to help.”
“Does it occur to you that she’s using you to find me? She knows you’re inhabited and therefore that I’d seek you out, if she knows everything Nsoroma told me. And maybe she’s dolling these women one by one because that’s how she’ll find me: among the females you consort with.”
